Nick Clegg was always going to have to devote much of his time in last night's debate to defending himself against attacks from the rightwing press. But his strategists had evidently decided that the best defence is a good offence. And if you can infuriate your Conservative-supporting, anti-European critics by insinuating that being anti-Europe is tantamount to being pro-paedophilia, well, why not?

The Lib Dem leader used his opening statement to hit back on the subject of patriotism, informing viewers – in a blatant retort to the Mail's "Nazi slur" story – that "my mother was freed by British troops from a prisoner of war camp".

Then he embarked on an arguably foolhardy effort to cast his European Union experience as something a Tory-sympathising voter ought to love.

He mocked bureaucratic fixations on the definition of chocolate, then noted, rather ostentatiously, that he had worked in Brussels with Leon Brittan, the man Margaret Thatcher had sent to Europe. And the coup de grace: the EU had broken a major paedophile ring, he pointed out – an initiative to which the Conservatives were, through their opposition to European collaboration on such matters, effectively opposed.

"My family knows what British values really mean," he added. It was a performance best described, perhaps, as Mailier-than-thou.